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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1959.PDF
762 FLIGHT International, 7 November 1963 Troops of a US Army Field Artillery Missile Battalion training to use the MGM-3IA Pershing are here seen deploying the complete weapon system in an open field. In war, of course, they would seek cover at night to enable lights on the missile to assist in tracking. Full- range overland firings have lately been made from Utah to the White Sands Missile Range, and missiles have been in troops' hands for almost a year. The weapon system has been adopted by the Federal German Republic, and troops of the first German battalion (of a total expected to be two) are now being trained. Sergeant, the replacement for Corporal, is now largely a completed programme for the US Army, although the battalion of the Federal German Army is still taking delivery. The US 7th Army in Europe has been operational with Sergeant since March. Although a vast improvement over the obsolescent Corporal, this weapon system is heavy and cumbersome, requiring several large articulated vehicles to carry it; and the need to assemble the missile in the field and suffer a 45-70min countdown are further disadvantages. One still hankers after Blue Water, which was carried on a 3-ton truck and could be fired six minutes after pulling off the road. Few reliable details are available of the chief Soviet weapons in this category. Several models are believed to have been (tempora rily) supplied to Cuba last year. Moscow parades have included three Soviet battlefield rockets, the two smaller of which are unguided. The latter have the NATO name "Frog," presumably derived from "free rocket over ground." One of these may have been the rocket fired 15 miles by the Indonesian Navy last July. This class of weapon is exemplified in the West by the US Army "John" series of spin-stabilized artillery rockets, which have MISSILES 1963 proved effective in use despite—in the case of Honest John, especi ally in the original M31 form—being heavy and somewhat unwieldy. Many thousands of Honest Johns have been fired during troop training for the many nations friendly to the USA which are equip ped with this weapon. Most rounds fired have been M31s, to use up stocks now replaced by the lighter and more efficient M50. Both versions have the Department of Defense designation MGR-1. Sole guided battlefield bombardment weapon of the US forces is Lacrosse, which as long ago as 1958 was in troops' hands demon strating that it could be guided by radio command in any weather or at night to impact on targets the size of a small vehicle up to 20 miles distant. Eight battalions have been equipped with it, and this truck-mounted weapon system is also serving with the Canadian Army. As noted at the outset of this chapter, these established weapons are difficult to replace. For at least five years the US Army Ord nance Missile Command, at Redstone Arsenal, has been engaged in intensive studies into a series of weapons called Missile A, Missile B and Missile C, each covering a particular range bracket. Since 1960 work has concentrated on Missile B, which has now become a firm programme farmed out to industry. Lance is its name, and it covers the range bracket from three to 30 miles. It has many points of similarity to Blue Water: it is a low-cost weapon, it flies a ballistic trajectory controlled by a self- contained guidance system, it has a conventional or nuclear war head, it is approximately the same size and weight, and a single round is carried on each mobile launcher. But Systron-Donner, who are responsible to prime contractor Chance Vought for gui dance, hope to achieve an Automet (automatic meteorological compensation) guidance system much cheaper than any normal inertial arrangement using low-drift gyros for each axis. Automet relies upon accelerometers, possibly with some form of simple stabilization (a low-quality gyro could stabilize the roll axis), and the control system governs the thrust vector of the packaged liquid motor. The only drawback is the impossibility of holding the sys tem price anywhere near that of the Johns or even Lacrosse. Much simpler is the Davy Crockett, a "brute force and ignorance" weapon designed by somebody in the US Army Weapons Command haunted by the difficulty of stopping an advancing horde having breadth and depth. It consists of a sub-kiloton 28cm nuclear warhead mounted on a 12 or 15.5cm motor fired from a recoilless- rifle tube over ranges up to about five miles. There are two laun chers, one for two infantrymen and the other for vehicular mounting. The US 7th Army in Europe has 20 per division, and much has been written of possible British deployment. Now obsolescent are two US weapon systems more in the nature of pilotless bombers. Regulus I still serves aboard two US1N TABLE 2: TACTICAL MISSILES Designation (see footnotes) MGM-5A Corporal MGR-IB Honest John MGM-I8A Lacrosse XMGM-52A Lance MGR-3A Little John MGM-I3B Mace (formerly Mace A) MGM-I3C Mace (formerly Mace B) NordSS.I2 MGM-3IA Pershing PGM-llA Redstone RGM-6B Regulus Robot 315 MGM-29A Sergeant User USA, UKA USA, NATO USA, Canada USA USA USAF, Germ USAF France USA, Germ USA USN Swedish navy USA, Germ Prime contractor Firestone Tire and Rubber Emerson Electric Martin Co, Orlando Division Chance Vought Divn of LTV Emerson Electric Martin Co, Baltimore Division Martin Co, Baltimore Division Nord-Aviation Martin Co, Orlando Division Chrysler Corp Chance Vought Divn of LTV Robotbyran Sperry Utah Co Dime Length 45ft 4in 24ft lOin 19ft 2in n.r. 14ft 9in 44ft 44ft lin 6ft lin 34ft 9in 69ft 4in 34ft 24ft 34ft 6in isions Max diam 30in 30in 20.5in n.r. I2.5in 54in 54in 7. lin 40in 70in Ha — 3lin Launch wt (lb) 11,200 4,720 2.300 n.r. 780 14,000 18,000 165 10,000 62,000 14,500 3,000 10,000 ra .% Note: MGM, mobile ruided missile; MGR, mobile Euided rocket; RGM, launched from ship on the surface.
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